Lovingly your teacher,
Anna Mason.
“Jimmy, Miss Mason says her girls will be here Saturday—that’s to-morrow. But I haven’t heard a word from the other girls about when they will arrive! If only they could come up and be with us all on Sunday. Don’t you suppose we could telephone Janet and let her arrange it?” asked Natalie anxiously, after reading the letter from Miss Mason.
“Perhaps the girls are planning to pack up and get away from the city for all summer when they do come here. In that case, I don’t see how they could manage to get away on Saturday. But we can telephone and find out,” returned Mrs. James.
So Janet was called over the ’phone, and Natalie heard to her great delight that Janet was coming Saturday evening even though other girls in the group would not leave the city until the middle of the following week.
That afternoon at sundown Natalie inspected her garden critically, trying to judge it from another’s point of view. When she returned to the house she sat down on the piazza beside Mrs. James and sighed.
“I suppose everyone will laugh at my garden. The seeds aren’t big yet,—only the lettuce and other things that I transplanted from the Ames’s farms. Do you think they really will grow up, Jimmy?”
“Of course they will. Does the sun shine or do we succeed in growing anything from the ground?” laughed Mrs. James.
“But this is different. I am not an experienced farmer and maybe the vegetables won’t grow for me.”
“The poor little seeds never stop to wonder whether you are a farmer or not. They have no partiality. It is their business to grow and bring forth results, so they get busy and attend to their business the moment they are planted. But all things take time to develop,—so with seeds. They do not give you a full-grown head of lettuce or cauliflower in a night.”